Welcome accent on transparency

If the international community is to be convinced of the progress this country is making on the national rejuvenation and normalization fronts, it has to only come and see for itself the current concrete conditions in the North-East in particular. This is the essential import of the pronouncement by External Affairs Ministry Secretary Karunathilaka Amunugama which we front paged yesterday. ‘Seeing is believing’ and this cannot be truer of the efforts being put in by the Lankan state to normalize conditions in the once conflict-affected areas of this country.

We welcome in particular the announced measure of opening the North-East to the scrutiny of the international media. This is a long overdue step and if the world needs clinching proof that the Lankan state is indeed making progress in bringing socio-economic progress to the North-East, nothing would be timelier than to open the once war-ravaged areas to the scrutiny of the world media. Such measures would accrue to the credit of the Sri Lankan state because it would be established for certain that Sri Lanka is committed to the principle of transparency in its handling of issues pertaining to the North-East.

Parallel to these efforts, the state must also focus on dialoguing more speedily with those sections of the Tamil diaspora which are willing to cooperate with the government in re-building the North-East. Those areas which were at one time withering under the diktat of the LTTE are today very ripe for investment and entrepreneurial development, and it would be wise to invite the international community and the diaspora to visit districts, such as, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu for purpose of assessing their potential for business development.

Likewise, foreign and local tourism must be increasingly encouraged in the North-East. Besides, enabling the visitors to these areas to have the evidence of their eyes that material advancement is occurring in these provinces, people-to-people contact is thus steadily promoted between the different segments of our population and between the latter and the international community.

Among other things, the world community would be enabled to see for itself that displacement is no more an issue, for instance. Such openness would expose as figments of the imagination, the falsehoods that are concocted about this country by its internal and external enemies.

Today, such a wondrous sea-change has occurred in the North-East that quite a few foreign tourists cannot believe that they are in a once war-torn land. Such first hand experience is the best anti-dote to the virulent anti-Lanka propaganda that is spread in this country and outside. Sri Lanka is fast on the mend and if this message is to be carried to the world outside, the state should continue to be committed to a policy of openness and transparency.

Therefore, it is most judicious to increase our interactions with the world outside and to keep a dialogue process going vibrantly with those sections of the diaspora which mean well towards Sri Lanka. We need to diminish past polarizations as we go along and enabling the different communities of the land to relate to each other with increasing cordiality is a necessary dimension of the ongoing normalization process.

Opening the North-East to increasing media scrutiny, besides enabling positive impressions of this country to be transmitted to the world outside, would also help in empowering the people of the provinces concerned, and it should be clear that empowerment is what democratic development is all about.

There could be no trade-offs between development and democracy and one could not be had without the other. Therefore, media scrutiny of North-East developments should be welcomed because it would enable the authorities to ensure that material progress in the provinces really benefits the people and enables them to be empowered and self-sufficient.